


'Care' and 'Infinity'

by BID



Series: Randomized Frostiron [2]
Category: Avengers (2012), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Flashback, M/M, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-30 23:57:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BID/pseuds/BID
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony and Loki have been having this 'thing' for a while now.<br/>They fuck, and they talk science and magic.<br/>They don't talk about what <em>that</em> was, what would happen if the team found out, or ask where the other was when either of them, mostly Loki, vanished for longer bouts of time, but it usually wasn't more then a week  maybe two.</p><p>This time though, this time it had been three months since Tony had last seen the god, or heard anything from him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Care' and 'Infinity'

Tony and Loki have been having this 'thing' for a while now.  
They fuck, and they talk science and magic.  
They don't talk about what _that_ was, what would happen if the team found out, or ask where the other was when either of them, mostly Loki, vanished for longer bouts of time, but it usually wasn't more then a week maybe two.

This time though, this time it had been three months since Tony had last seen the god, or heard anything from him.  
He had asked Thor if anyone on Asgard knew where he was, but to no avail.  
Tony couldn't follow the trickster through the realms, no matter how much it frustrated him, no matter how much he wanted to just know that Loki was all right, not held captive somewhere, but there was literally nothing he could do besides monitoring the whole planet.  
And work.  
His brain wouldn't stop it's output, couldn't hold onto one idea longer than a few hours.  
Usually it lasted until he had actually made it work, nothing stuck but one thing, one project he always came back to. 

Extremis. 

Well, not the same Extremis as Kilian had used, he had rewritten it, stabilized it and reprogrammed for his own use.  
It had been last week that he had started his treatment.  
A small dose, once a day for one month and he wouldn't be human anymore, not really.  
He'd be physically somewhat stronger, he'd be quicker and have better reflexes, and he could withstand extreme temperatures without trouble.  
After one week he already showed an impressive healing factor.  
Also, his life span would be increased.  
Greatly increased.  
'Not currently possible to calculate any exact numbers' - increased.  
A few hundred years atleast.  
Oh, and his body would be able to hold nanobots without any harmful effects.

When the idea of using the Extremis on himself had crossed his mind increasing his lifespan hadn't been his plan, he had outright dismissed the idea.  
Now though, with an immortal lover, and a field of science (yes, ok, he finally admitted that magic was a kind of science) which's surface he had barely scratched he decided that it'd be a waste to die at age 80.

And for all he could now accidentally rip out the fridge door, he just couldn't find this stupid infuriating god of mischief that had wormed himself into his stupid metal heart.  
Yes, while Tony was a great liar, he really wasn't in the mood to lie to himself about the way he liked Loki.  
Loki, who understood him, who could keep up with his mind, who drank up everything he could learn and Loki, whose eyes almost literally glowed when talking about magic, seeing Tony actually getting it.  
Of course he could tell himself that his relation to the god was just 'fucking' and 'science', but really, that man -- god -- was just too interesting to put him into either of those boxes, Loki'd blow them up, just like he blew Tony‘s mind (and cock) on a regular basis.

Tony had no idea what he was to Loki. If Loki's absence was actually the god coming to his senses and deciding that, for all that Tony was a genius, that 'Stark' was just a mortal in the end and below him.  
It grated on the engineer‘s nerves that he didn't have the data.  
There had been some situations when Tony was so, so sure that he was special to Loki, that he was not just another acquaintance, for example when they lay in bed after a session of incredible sex, slotted together like puzzle pieces, the god pressing his face into Tony's neck or practically shoving his nose against the crease of his armpit, to burrow his face in the genius shoulder. When he gave Tony those rare, small and sweet smiles, which he pretended not to see, because when he did Loki would school his face again to give those, not entirely false but not entirely true smirks and masks.  
When Tony asked how Loki came to this point the God had actually answered, after a bout of silence, and had actually told Tony his story, his life, murmured and hissed into Tony's chest, words tumbling against the Arc Reactor.  
The glowing circle in his chest which the god had never actually asked about, but looked at oddly, and curious so many times, but he never asked about it, or about Tony's life.  
Loki seemed always a bit on the careful side, as not to overstep any nonexistent boundaries of Tony's hospitality or patience or whatever the hell made Loki pull back so often, and kept him from actually, for example, sleep in the Tower.  
Except for one time, when Loki dropped into the middle of his penthouse floor, bleeding all over the polished wood, armour smoking, and swaying on his feet until Tony had spotted him, and the god had given a weak relieved smile and promptly passed out, trusting Tony to take care of him, to shield him.  
It had been shocking, to be honest.

 

And _where the fuck was he_?!

 

Tony leaned back on his white couch in Malibu.  
A fresh dose of the extremis shooting into his veins and feeling a tiny bit like a junky, but it was not a drug and while it did gave him a bit of a rush, that rush usually pulled him into sleep within twenty minutes.  
And really, he should go to bed, the couch would only give him a crick in his neck, healing factor or not, and it was late enough, not that he really cared about a socially acceptable sleeping cycle.  
But sitting there, on his sofa, looking at the fountain and the stairs that led down to his beloved workshop, fighting against sleep probably was the reason he didn't notice when his body actually drifted off and when reality and nightmares started mixing.  
It began with the worm hole, that black piece of space's horrors, reminding him of the H. P. Lovecraft novels he had read at MIT.  
Things that tried to pull his brain apart and the coldness of space which suddenly turned into the coldness of caves, of tunnels and the smell of metal in the air, desert and gunpowder and wet stone.  
Wet.  
Water.  
Water boarding and incredible thirst.  
Thirst and escape.  
Desert heat.  
Fire.  
The first time he inserted the arc reactor and realised how _hot_ it was in his chest, so hot it almost felt burning and then, that heat leaving him.  
A metal construct held by familiar hands that had squeezed his shoulder a thousand times pulling his hot heart out of his body.  
It was then that he suddenly snapped awake, saw somebody hovering over him, one hand leaned on the back of the couch, just like Obie.  
Obie!  
His reactor!  
His brain tried to tell him that it couldn't possibly be Obie.  
Obie was dead for a long time, and Obie hated green.  
Green.  
Loki.  
Loki!  
But his body and his brain seemed to work against each other, eyes seeing his godfather only, fighting against the nonexistent paralyse, his hand wrapping around the arm which was on the couch and squeezed, hearing bones creak and break satisfyingly, and then --

Suddenly everything stopped.  
Tony found himself on the ground, or rather on Loki.  
One knee pressing into the god's spine, an arm twisted in his hand and Loki hissing his name,  
again,  
and again,  
and again almost like a prayer not even looking at him but forehead pressed against the ground, eyes squeezed shut, body trembling, unable to decide between freezing rigid and lax, possibly attack, and why the hell was Loki on the ground?  
Why was he here?!  
How did he --  
At once Tony realised, the Extremis, he had downed a god with it.  
With a quarter dose of Extremis.  
He -- he had given the smallest possible increase of actual bodily power, and -- fuck!  
Tony let go of Loki and slid down onto the ground and a few feet away from the trickster who currently picked himself up.  
The wall pressed cool against the inventors back, and he could feel his mechanical heart beat too fast, way to fast, and he just couldn't get his breathing under control!  
Why couldn't he breathe?  
Why --

"Anthony, you need to breathe." the god called out, pressing a glowing hand against his broken arm and, right, he had broken Loki's arm, he had attacked the god, _fuck_.  
"Loki" he rasped, and it was more a sigh of air than a word really,  
but Tony could feel something dark in himself crack as he realised he was safe.  
It was Loki.  
Just Loki.  
Brilliant Loki,  
clever Loki with his sharp mind and silver tongue.  
His broken and dangerous and wild Loki.  
He felt his body shake and pulled his knees to his chest in a desperate try to stop his quivering muscles,  
to top himself from trembling but it only got worse.  
And when Loki knelt in front of him, hands outstretched as if the god was not sure what to do,  
whispering so -- so softly and almost afraid "Anthony?"  
Tony felt himself break.  
Shatter apart.  
He felt tears spill over his cheeks and pressed his hands against his face and his face into his legs to hide himself, curling in and hiding, making sure that not a sound'd escape him.  
He wanted to send the god away, he wasn't supposed to see him like this,  
no one was supposed to see him like this, he wasn't supposed to break, except his sanity maybe.  
The little that was left these days, and why, why was Loki still here?!  
Was he here?!  
Tony couldn't know, there was an abyss of black that was so much different -- worse that the portal, sucking his mind in as all those stupid, stupid emotions he had bottle dup for so -- so long drowned him.  
Drowned him almost like that stupid tub in Afghanistan, and -- and --  
His brain shut down.  
It stopped.  
He felt his nails biting his his palms, and the healing factor removing the tiny cuts, and a hand in his hair.  
What?  
Yes, yes there was a long fingered, slim hand carding through his hair and something warm against his back.  
He could hear Loki's breathing and uncharacteristic soft murmurs against his right ear and then he realised:  
Loki was hugging him, wrapping himself around Tony as much s physically possible,  
and fuck,  
he was comforting him, trying to soothe him and _fuck_ why did that make it worse?!  
Why did he suddenly have to think that no one had ever held him like this when he was a kid?  
Wasn't this something parents were supposed to do?!  
Tony couldn't help himself, he didn't want to, but he was already crying and shaking like some stupid kid in front of a god,  
then he might as well lean against said god before that gorgeous creature gets disgusted or bored and _fuck it_.  
So he did, pressed his side against Loki's body and the arms and legs that were wrapped around him squeezed in answer, pulling him even closer.  
In the end he had his face buried in Loki's neck, as much god covering his body as possible, hiding from the world and when his eyes decided that he had no tears anymore and his muscles became to tired to shake,  
and that dark, black thing was shattered to pieces, he only felt numb.  
Completely, entirely and utterly numb and it was -- well, neither bad nor good.

He was tired but those fingers that just wouldn't stop scratching patters on his scalp and carding his hair kept him awake, reminding him, aside from the warmth and the heartbeat, that no, he wasn't alone.  
He wasn't alone, Loki was here, and Loki hated it when he fell asleep on him.  
Didn't mean that he moved.  
Loki.

"Ok, that was fucked up." Tony croaked, his voice thankfully mostly unaffected, for thank god (whichever) he at least hadn't whimpered or shit like that.  
The god's hand stilled for a moment, and then continued like before, it took Tony a moment to realise that it were runes that were traces on his head, and, were those 'Care' and 'Infinity' ?!  
"May I ask what exactly 'that' was?" Loki's calm voice pulled Tony again out of his head, stopping those possibilities of 'Why would Loki trace exactly those?' the god's favourite runes were after all Fire and Chaos.  
"That" Tony started, "was a flashback and a -- ah, breakdown I suppose." and he picked himself up, peeling himself out of the Gods slender limbs, "I, ah, I suppose I'll have a shower now."  
Loki stood up, eyeing him with a not even half suppressed 'I know what you're doing'-look, but then nodded, "Very well. You will explain to me the workings of computers programming after that." then the god stalked down the stairs of the workshop, giving him the privacy of pretending it never happened.

Some days Tony though, quietly, and only in the privacy of the very back of his mind that he really did love that bastard god.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it!  
> Kudos, comments and criticism are appreciated!  
> My brain just won't stop with all the FrostIron ideas, and this one just wrote itself while I listened to "Flocence and the Machine" or the first time.


End file.
